Marketing and Branding Blog | SilkCards

Whether your business is completely online, or completely brick and mortar, both online and offline marketing bring their own unique advantages. Here’s something you might not know; with the right balance of each channel, online and offline marketing can work together to produce even more powerful results for your business.

Online and Offline Marketing Defined

Offline marketing includes more of what’s considered "traditional" media, such as radio, TV, newspapers, mail, presentations and even handing out business cards. Basically, anything that doesn’t require being online.

Although it’s easy to dismiss offline marketing as "old-fashioned" or only for the small percentage of people who don't use the internet, it’s much more powerful than people think.

Because radio, TV stations and newspapers tend to have a loyal audience, people who advertise with them tend to have stronger brand loyalty. Also, because there is no spam filter on paper materials or the spoken word, consumers are more likely to engage with advertising than with online marketing programs.

Offline marketing can often be an introduction to a local product or service and create brand awareness.

Here are 3+ great ways to combine offline and online marketing:

Prompt consumers to visit your web page with an incentive

Publicize offline events and sales via social media

Use location-based online ads to drive offline interest

BONUS: For brick-and-mortar companies that rely on big sales around certain holidays, using all three combined with traditional marketing can push really strong results.

Consistency when Combining

The importance of having a consistent voice in both traditional and online marketing cannot be underestimated. When your website presents a completely different tone than your radio advertisements, for example, customers can be confused and wonder what the company really represents.

"To create consistency in offline and online marketing, try to create a style guide before conducting a marketing campaign."

A style guide sets the rules for the type of tone you want to use, images, words, and phrases.

When a customer goes online to find out more about a company or product, it's important that they are not led astray by other search results. To this end, there are several ways to make sure your offline collateral pieces support your online efforts.

"On a spoken ad, make sure the website is spelled out."

Match the keywords in your offline print ads to the keywords in your website, and don't introduce any new keywords or concepts. Make your website match any possible search that could be generated by one of your offline ads.

"If you have aired commercials, be the first one to put them up on YouTube, and make sure you embed the videos on your website as well."

Use online media to create a dialog with customers. A hashtag can carry a brand across multiple media, including offline ads.